Intricate
by registered independent
Summary: “So, Vincent,” she said in a casual, cool tone. “Now that they’re all gone from your head...do you miss them?” oneshot.


A/N: ah, another vincent fic i've made. in my own humble opinion, he's by far the best. for the moment. read, review, have at it. and just to remind you all, i own nothing.

**Intricate.**

"So, Vincent," she said in a casual, cool tone. "Now that they're all gone from your head...do you miss them?"

 She watched him as the few seconds passed between her question and his answer. He looked like he used to back then. Guarded. Like he was questioning. Like he was _being_ questioned.

He blinked, and it was gone, but he was still stumbling for words.

"I do...but I do not," he began, his voice low, almost a growl. She never understood how the ground beneath her didn't shake every time he spoke, or grunted, or hummed. "They...were not nice," he stated lamely, before continuing, "but they weren't always so horrible. Most of the things they did or said was to protect me...because they were protecting themselves."

She loved the way he spoke slowly and clearly, putting emphasis on every word. It reminded her the heaviness and weight speech actually held. How words _meant _something. Not as in definitions, but that words were to convey thoughts and feelings and the things people thrive on. She loved the fact that she knew Vincent knew this too. He of all people should know the importance of words and the sheer privilege to be able to use him. He should know. She loved that he did. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes.

"But other times, they were truthfully only terribly bored."

She noted the way he slightly winced when he threw in the side comment, and tilted her head.

"So, what did they do?"

She poked and prodded and probed. That was who she was. She was harsh, grating, like nails screeching across chalkboard. And yet, that was exactly what he needed; he needed outright indignation in his mind after years and years and year and _years _of mind games and covert plans and subterfuge inside him that he wasn't even aware of. He noticed the way her great dark grey eyes lit up when she was asking questions. Pure childish delight. Her knees were facing him now, along with the rest of her body, her hands clasped eagerly in her lap.

"Yuffie..."

She slid back beside him, facing outwards once more, her eyes dimming to their usual sparkle before she said, "you're right. You don't have to answer. That's your business."

He marveled at her newfound maturity. Four years ago, things had been so different. She had her insightful moments and intricate conspiracies back then, but she was still a child, physically and mentally. And now, she had grown. Her maturity was embedded in every motion and thought and expression, from the way she held her head to the way she expressed herself. She used _words_ now, not simple motions or screeches or sounds. She always used them, always knew them, and yet, it seemed, to him, that it was only now that she started using them. Like a child taking its first steps. He inhaled.

"At times, they had full control of my head."

"I know that. I saw it."

He sighed, unable to fully explain himself. He made another attempt, saying, "they could, at times, have full control of my mind without the physical manifestation. They were able to distort reality for me. They made me believe things that were not so."

The way her eyelashes so lightly trimmed her eyes was always a feature of hers that caught Vincent. He could never tear his eyes away that split second her eyes closed and the lashes came together, brushing up before her stormy eyes once again shone to the world. He wondered if she had any idea the jolt he felt every time she blinked.

"What did they make you believe?"

Flashes of green mixed with white flew across his mind, along with the image of a brown ponytail snap to the side and the swishing of the bottom of a lab coat that was turning into a doorway.

"_I'm so sorry..."_

"_Why? I'm the one who should apologize."_

"Vincent?"

She already knew though, and he knew she knew. Her whisper of his name was more of a plea, really, a plea for him to forgive her for ever bringing up something like that again. She felt like ripping off her own skin and wrapping it around him to protect him from ever thinking of her and his atonement ever again.

He had already forgiven her four thought processes ago though. A silence settle about them as Yuffie tried to telepathically beg for his forgiveness and Vincent attempted to soothe her. He decided to break the silence and switch topics all at once.

"I do miss their abilities, though."

Yuffie smiled faintly, laying down and stretching beside him, squeezing her eyes shut before relaxing them once more, but not opening them. Vincent couldn't help but follow her with his gaze and once again lock on those eyes of hers. He just couldn't _help_ it.

"Yeah. They were a dream to fight with."

Except the time when Hellmasker had gone too far after killing a monster, towering over her moments after she fell, no eyes or face behind that mask, only the smell of decaying flesh, leering in front of her face for what could have been hours before Vincent finally took control once again and fell limp against her body. They stayed there like that for what could have been another few hours before he finally groaned into consciousness and rolled off her, and all she could do was lay there and try to remember that it wasn't Vincent who was behind that mask. Nothing but pure hatred was behind that mask. The only question he asked was why she smelled dead and she brightly shrugged it off as just the monster they killed. He didn't smell of it. He didn't ask. He didn't want to know and she tried to hard to walk calmly into her hotel room to shower into three days later to scrub the smell of decaying flesh and curdled blood and the only thing she saw every time she closed her eyes under that shower were the rotting bodies hanging in the trees outside her village during the wars and how they softly swayed in the breeze. She didn't tell him all of that though.

"So...Chaos, and all them, what were they like?"

He glanced over her once more, and even with her eyes closed he could see her love for questions. Her arms were folded neatly behind her head, her long legs crossed at the ankles. He thought.

"In my head...there weren't separate entities. They were, but they didn't feel as such to me. They had different senses. Galian Beast, he communicated to me through images he sent to my head. Death Gigas...rarely ever had any input. From what I gather, it was taste. Usually metallic. I suppose it was meant to be blood. Hellmasker..."

She could tell from the way he tensed beside her that he wasn't anymore fond of him as she was and she was almost sure he remembered what happened that night on their way back to Wutai, no matter what sort of fool he had chosen to play.

"...He had control of my pain. My physical pain. And Chaos..."

He once again sighed, and brought hit knees up, laying his arms across them and then resting his forehead against his arms. He stared into the space between his legs, but he wasn't really paying much attention. He was thinking.

"Chaos was the only one who spoke. Or rather, perhaps, he was the only one I could hear. I'm not sure, and I never will be. He made me doubt myself. He made me doubt my words. He made me doubt I really was alive, and when he twisted my reality, he always so blissfully chose for me to believe there was an afterlife and that my atonement was over and I finally deserved to be happy. It made waking up so much harder every time."

Vincent groaned internally, squeezing his eyes shut and thanked the gods Yuffie couldn't see his face before continuing. "He kept me quiet. He was my consciousness. I would think of something to say and he would answer every way that it could have been perceived in a wrong sense. I never wanted to offend. I could not have afforded that."

Vincent was startled as he heard a strangled sob emitted beside him and he snapped his head up, giving the surrounding area a once-over before turning his attention back to the girl--no, woman, he had to remind himself every time, no matter how many times she had already proven it to him. She swiftly sat back up and faced Vincent, and the first thing he noticed was the way her tears clung to her eyelashes as if they were afraid of falling, afraid they couldn't make the trek down her face. She reached out and gently grasped the front of his cape, tugging slightly.

"I'm so sorry," she breathed out.

"_I'm so sorry..."_

"Why? I'm--Yuffie, you did nothing. There is no reason for you to apologize, nor I."

"_I'll be alright."_

"But still. This...someone has to apologize," she gave a small smile, which should have looked awkward with a tear-stained face and slightly pinker nose, and yet, it looked just fine. "I'm willing to take the blame."

He could have smiled. "It's not your place. I'm not looking for someone to blame."

Another silence, and once again, it was restless. Yuffie wanted to scream and kick and punch anything that had every hurt him, and anything that ever will. She wanted to collect him in her arms and tell him everything is alright and throw him off a cliff for seeming to be so devoid of emotion. And most of all, she wanted to cry, cry because of his past and the way it would never let him love her in the future.

She felt like she was a child again, watching the massacre. She tightened her grip around his cloak.

"Yuffie..."

She felt gloved hands slowly worm their way into her fists, slowly and gently wrenching the fabric out of her small hands, warm and smooth against her skin. The thing she loved most about Vincent was his touch. He was deadly. Vincent was the deadliest thing that Yuffie had ever let near her without retaliation. He was constant and ever-changing all at once. She noticed the way most people reacted when he'd brush up against them passing by in crowds. Winces and hisses always followed. And yet, his touch felt like warm linen and lazy afternoons to her. Afternoons spent in bed wondering what life would be full of and what it would bring back when she was younger and the air was cleaner and the light was brighter.

"I can't do this anymore, Vincent..."

Everything about Vincent reminded her of a time when she was more hopeful. She couldn't wait any longer, though. She spent more time than she could waiting and wishing and pleading inside her head that he would come back to her instead of that coffin and the memory of _her_--the first time his heart was broken and his life was taken away from him without him even seeing it coming. It seemed like he was doing everything he could to make sure it was the last. All the nights she spent tossing and turning in bed, so cold and twisted and suffocating, she thought about this and him and how much longer she was willing to wait and why he was doing this. She came to the realization of why a long time ago. It was easy. It was his own self-preservation. What wasn't easy was how much longer she'd wait.

"...It's almost been five years."

And it was true, it had been almost five years since she kissed him and he didn't reject her, and their silent understanding came that he couldn't yet and she would wait. At first, Vincent was banking on her youth and stupidity and inability to be a good judge of character and see that there was _no future with him._ And yet as more and more time passed and the more quiet smiles she gave he started feeling that he wanted there to be a future. A future with her and peace and no more internal battles. Two steps had already been completed for that future. He had his internal peace. He still didn't have her. He still just couldn't. All he could do was catch her chin and pull it towards him, forcing her to stare into his eyes. The very same eyes that rarely ever allowed any sort of emotion penetrate them, but at that moment held such depth that she couldn't even imagine what he was feeling, before he answered simply, "I know."


End file.
